


smoke

by ssstrychnine



Category: The Old Guard (Comics), The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Canon Temporary Character Death, Enemies to Lovers, Getting Together, M/M, i mean like is there any other tag i havent checked i think this is probably it, uh.... you know of course
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-22
Updated: 2020-07-22
Packaged: 2021-03-05 01:34:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,298
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25436236
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ssstrychnine/pseuds/ssstrychnine
Summary: Sometimes Yusuf laughs when he sees him, like he’s surprised, even though he must have the same knot under his ribs as Nicky does. Once he calls Nicky’s name and it startles him so badly he drops his blade and Yusuf doesn’t kill him then, just leaves him behind, gasping for air, feeling like the sun has come out from shadow only to strike him blind.nicolo and yusuf across a continent. dying sometimes living sometimes.
Relationships: Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova
Comments: 38
Kudos: 269





	smoke

Nicolò isn’t there the first time Yusuf is killed, but he dreams of it. A man in grey and gold, beautiful under flames until his horse falls and he’s crushed. Blood mingles with dirt and sweat and smoke. This man dies and then he comes back together and he opens his eyes, dark under the blue light of the moon, wide awake and frightened, and Nicky wakes as well, in his cot, wet with sweat and shaking, and knows instantly that it’s a test. It’s been a month since his own first death and he’s been waiting for the reason for it to become clear and now it is. This man is an enemy meant only for him. 

There are four more deaths before they meet. Two each. Three years. Nicky dreams them all. A curved blade, a silk banner bright against the sky. He feels it all behind his teeth like cold steel, and there’s this high tight pain along the sockets of his eyes, his cheekbones, when he wakes, like something has broken apart under his skin or like a piece of something alien has embedded itself there. He doesn’t sleep after those dreams. He lights candles and he prays, knelt beside his bed, but he hears nothing back and the feeling doesn’t leave him.

The man is dying the first time Nicky finds him, in a town that’s bright and dark with burning. He’s slumped over in the street, hands limp and open at his sides, and he’s dying and he’s Nicky’s enemy, chosen for him alone, but he can’t... if he dies in this street and then comes back, no matter who finds him he will burned and burned and burned again. So Nicky drags him out of the street and into a hollowed out stable, under stone ribs, and lets him down. His eyes are closed and his eyelashes are long and dark against his cheeks. There is a wet red stain spreading across his chest. His hands are open. Nicky steps back, digs his heels into the sand, adjusts his grip on the hilt of his sword. His eyes are stinging. Looking at this man is... painful, in a way he’s never felt before, like he’s hollowed out, like something has been cut from him.

The man makes a sound, a whispered groan, sharply bitten off. His eyelashes tremble. His fingers dig into the sand strewn across the floor. Nicky watches him. His hair is tangled, falling over his face, and Nicky wants to push it back, tuck it carefully under the scarf, put him back together.

“Try not to die in the open,” he says, in clumsy Arabic. The man opens his eyes. 

“Never touch me again,” he growls, and he lurches to his feet, pulls Nicky’s sword from its sheath, and thrusts it through his chest.

When Nicky comes to, the man is gone. There is blood there still, where he lay, dark red clumps of dirt and sand. Some of it must be his, the sword left by his side is wet and his clothing sticks to his skin, and he thinks he ought to be able to tell the difference, what’s a part of him and what’s a part of this other man, but he can’t. He gets to his feet and he kicks at the dirt until it is just dirt again and he rubs his sword down with sand and he leaves.

It’s easy for them to find one another after that. There is a cord between them, a knot inside through blood and bone, and it tightens when they’re close. It should be impossible, to find one person among thousands, across a continent, with years between, but Nicky doesn’t question it. His name is Yusuf Al-Kaysani, he won’t be Joe for a long time still, and he’s all Nicky thinks about some days. The dreams stop, but he can still feel him, like a splinter under skin. He wonders how he wakes up in the morning, if he sleeps deeply, if he has nightmares. If it will happen soon, whatever they’re supposed to do to one another, to make what they’ve been given mean something. An enemy made only for him. There has to be meaning in it, somewhere. It has to make sense.

They kill each other often, but they don’t touch. NIcky doesn’t think that death can be a touch. A blade through flesh is not the same as skin on skin. _Never touch me again_ , so Nicky kills him ten times in one night instead, and is killed ten times himself, until the ground under them is sodden with blood and their clothing is in pieces. Nicky glimpses skin through the slashes and he fights harder. Yusuf cries out when he strikes and the bite of his blade, knowing that they cannot die, feels cold and bright and close.

Sometimes Yusuf laughs when he sees him, like he’s surprised, even though he must have the same knot under his ribs as Nicky does. Once he calls Nicky’s name and it startles him so badly he drops his blade and Yusuf doesn’t kill him then, just leaves him behind, gasping for air, feeling like the sun has come out from shadow only to strike him blind. 

There are years when they don’t see one another at all. Both sides of the war pull them into duty, or maybe Yusuf lives a life that isn’t part of that at all, but is his own. He will rise with the sun and roll out a mat and pray to a place further south than Nicky has ever been. He will talk to his horse in a low voice, brush it down, hold it still with his hands. He will walk through streets and laugh with those he knows and loves. Nicky lives among stone and candles and he prays and he hears nothing and he thinks of Yusuf. Made for him? He practices his Arabic every day, even though he knows it almost as well as his own tongue by now, and the women who he buys his fruit from laugh at him and tell him that he's getting worse. 

Sometimes it crosses his mind that someone else might kill Yusuf, that they do, and it makes him so angry he can't speak, can't think, can't feel anything at all. He is not theirs to kill. Not an enemy of Holy Rome, not like they've made everyone else in this land. Not theirs but his.

They find one another again, on a ridge of rock and bush, near the sea. There is a battle below them but it's a little way off, a blur of fire and sound. They will cross blades and both will die and live and die again. Nicky has been looking for him. He grins against the night. But then someone else finds them, one from Nicky's side, a knight for God in helm and quartered tabard. He runs, screaming, past Nicky, sword held high, and Yusuf trips on something, falls back, and Nicky doesn't think about it, he runs the other man down with his horse, plunges his sword through the back of his neck, lets him fall beneath him, and then they are alone again.

Yusuf gets slowly to his feet. He watches Nicky warily.

"Are you hurt?" Nicky asks, voice hoarse. He wipes his blade across his thighs then sheaths it. 

"Did you not come to hurt me?" Yusuf asks, expression unreadable. 

"No," says Nicky. "I came to kill you."

"Why?"

"You're..." He frowns, wraps the reins around his knuckles, once, twice, then lets out the loop.

"You must have come to this place for a reason, did you forget it?" he asks, eyes sharp. "What sins do you need forgiven?"

"I don't know," he says, quietly. All of them, he thinks. 

"There are others like us."

"I know, I've dreamt of them." But you're mine alone, he thinks. 

"A woman came to me. She wants to meet you too."

Nicky doesn't say anything. He adjusts his grip on his sword, leans forward to press the back of his knuckles to his horse's warm throat.

"Will you come?" Yusuf asks and Nicky doesn't hesitate.

"I will," he says.

Yusuf takes him to a building plastered and tiled in blue and cream. There are drawings on the walls, thick parchment and charcoal, of a woman screaming underwater, of a man holding himself together with his hands, and of Nicky most of all. Nicky with his hair caught up by wind. Nicky with light in his eyes. Nicky with blood on his face. He pauses in front of one, can hardly recognize himself in it, sharp eyes, sharp everything, but a soft mouth, and the thought that maybe Yusuf thinks of him too is almost overwhelming.

"Niccolò," says Yusuf from behind him, voice soft. "This is Andromache."

She is steel-spined and gentle and easy to follow and easy to love. She tells them of the others, Quynh under the water, who was her life and love, and Lykon who knew better than any of them what death could mean. 

"I think we can help," she says. "Make something good of the world."

So they try to make something good. Nicky slips from his life and into another and it's far easier than he'd ever thought it could be, to leave it all behind. They guard supply runs for the bimaristans, getting medicine to places that serve everyone. They hunt down pillagers and profiteers who mean to burn towns that aren't part of any war, just farmers or fisherman. They travel where they feel they're needed and they're almost always right and it feels... good. Better than kneeling on stone. Better than lighting candles. 

Yusuf does rise with the sun and he does pray to a place Nicky has never seen and he does hold his horse gentle between his hands, but he also tells unfunny jokes and plays games with children and argues with Nicky about anything and everything, for hours at a time. Nicky finds he likes it. Nicky finds himself feeling more like he belongs to them than they belong to him.

They camp on the outskirts of towns, away from light and people, set up light cotton tents and bed rolls, and every evening Andromache leaves. She doesn't tell them where she's going and Nicky doesn't think it matters really, but she walks for hours and leaves Nicky and Yusuf to the fire.

On one of those nights, the sun has barely set and the sky is painted orange and pink. Yusuf is gold in the firelight, his hair loose and uncovered, flyaway, grey linen falling over his wrists, and Nicky is watching his hands, their long fingers, the charcoal smudges at the base of his thumb, and he realises then that he has never hated him. He isn't sure he's ever hated anyone. Not even those he was always taught to.

"I should not have killed you," he says, before he can think otherwise.

"I killed you first," says Yusuf, leaning forward, smiling crookedly into the flames.

"I thought... I thought you were an enemy sent to me by God," says Nicky, quietly. "Made for me."

Yusuf looks up and his expression is not sharp or angry, but gentle and calm and unafraid.

"Maybe I am," he says and he laughs. "Andromache was alone for hundreds of years before Quyhn and it was hundreds of years again before Lykon."

"And we're..." 

"We are..." Yusuf laughs again and shrugs. "Two halves of a whole, maybe," he says.

"Maybe," Nicky echoes. The smoke in the air is burning his eyes. He shifts forward, onto his knees before the fire. It's uncomfortably hot, but he doesn't mind it. His hands are shaking. He looks up to Yusuf, who is looking back at him. He is... beautiful, Nicky thinks, has thought since he first dreamt of him.

"Do you remember the first thing you said to me?" he asks, when the fire is lower and the heat less fierce.

"Never touch me again," says Yusuf. He is smiling. 

"Would you consider changing your mind?"

And Yusuf laughs and moves, takes the space between them in two strides and kneels again. He looks curious, most of all, when he touches Nicky first. He presses his palm to Nicky’s cheek, thumb brushing along the curve up to his temple, fingers pushing into his hair. His other hand rests at his throat, against his pulse, and Nicky isn’t sure what he should do with his own hands, so he rests them on Yusuf’s thighs, pushing into cream linen, making him smile. He kisses Nicky then, hands in his hair, mouth soft and warm and open, and Nicky surprises himself by not falling down or losing consciousness, just kissing him back, pulling him closer, running his hands up his chest and over his shoulders. 

And then Yusuf pulls back and he’s still smiling and his eyes are still bright and Nicky thinks that this it was supposed to mean. This is what they were given. Yusuf is watching him and smiling and Nicky wonders if he’s thinking the same thing.

“You have a smudge,” he says, and touches him again, brushes charcoal from the corner of his mouth and Nicky laughs and kisses the tips of his fingers and turns back to the fire. 

In Asqualan, on the edge of the sea, Nicky and Yusuf draw their swords again. Nicky's feet are bare and it's twilight so the sand is cool and their blades are silver against the blue air.

"My enemy, sent by God," says Yusuf, and Nicky laughs, wild and overjoyed.

"Made for you," he says, and they bring their blades together.

**Author's Note:**

> joe is yusuf here and nicky is... nicky mostly because i. wanted that. [asquelon](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashkelon) is a coastal city in israel that has been around awhile uuuh [a bimaristan](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bimaristan) is an islamic hospital, which helped anyone (including christians) for free. this was sort of written for a tumblr prompt, though it didn't actually fill the prompt but. [it is here on that website](https://oneangryshot.tumblr.com/post/624302230495985664). 
> 
> thank you for reading! lmk what you think!


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